Posts Tagged: Burgundy

The first time I met Madame Lalou Bize-Leroy about ten years ago, I was intimidated by this diminutive figure who was at least four inches shorter than me. Her snow-white, shoulder-length hair was pulled back in a low pony tail and her piercing blue eyes, the color of clear summer sky, seemed to look right into your soul.

It wasn’t just her reputation as the grand dame of Burgundy, one of the most powerful women in wine, formerly at the helm of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti and now Domaine Leroy, that intimidated me. Nor was it the fact that her wines are sublime and command the highest prices in Burgundy when they are released, usually later and in much smaller quantities than any other producer.

It was her intensity and clear love for her wines that both impressed and intimidated me at the same time. Many years ago I asked her how she manages to get so much intensity and energy in her wines, and she replied, “It is simple, I love my vines more than most people.” Continue reading: Forbes

Burgundy wines may become even more difficult to find because of vine disease and smaller harvests from aging vineyards, according to a new report by the region’s wine council. While demand for Burgundy is strong, and prices for top wines remain high, overall harvest size is set to shrink – and not just due to the perennial threat of hail storms.

Burgundy vineyards have ‘aged and the yields reduced significantly since 2000 in response to a range of factors’, said Corinne Trarieux, of the BIVB Technical Centre. The first problem relates to degenerative vine diseases such as esca or fanleaf, which affect almost 14% of vineyards and ultimately kill many vines. More than 100,000 hectares of vines across France were lost to disease in 2014, French government figures show.

The age of vines is a problem, too. In Côte d’Or and Saône-et-Loire, 60% of the vines are over 30 years old. The average age of a Burgundy vineyard is 50 years, which causes lower yields. Turnover of vines is under 1%. The replanting of dead vines only and not the whole area – ‘complantation’ – is a factor in low production. Officials conclude that, in the face of climate change, growers need to be proactive in addressing the various issues.

As Burgundy’s prices continue to either stay high or get higher as top Bordeaux gets cheaper, how high is too high for Burgundy?

The fortunes of Burgundy since those of Bordeaux went south in early 2011 are well documented and the Liv-ex Burgundy 150 index is the best performing sub-index on the Fine Wine 1000 so far this year – up 2.1%.

It was recently reported that first Italy and then Champagne had replaced Burgundy as the most traded regions on Liv-ex behind Bordeaux, bumping Burgundy down to fourth place.

Strictly in terms of value however, Burgundy remains one of the top performers due in no small measure to the fabulous prices fetched by its particular jewel-in-the-crown, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC).

The consensus was broadly that most wines had hit their upper limit and that in fact DRC had some time ago and had been coasting for some years; its rarity and over-subscribed demand protecting it from a bubble a la Lafite.

The Burgundy 150 is dominated by DRC’s various labels (six of them), with wines from another 10 domaines (five white, five red) making up the rest.

Italy’s regions have leap-frogged Burgundy to become the second most widely traded fine wines on Liv-ex so far this year.

Bordeaux still accounts for the lion’s share of trade every month although it has seen its piece of the fine wine pie shrink from over 95% to 73% over the last five years.

Burgundy was the next biggest category, particularly in value thanks to the big bucks labels such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Henri Jayer are able to command.

A close third was Italy – with a heavy slant towards the Super Tuscans – but as Burgundy’s price continues to reach its upper limit, the more affordable and liquid Italian wines have gained ground and so far this year have accounted for 7% of all activity to Burgundy’s 6.7%.

Burgundy was the guest of honor at Sotheby’s most lucrative New York wine auction in 15 years. The sale of the Don Stott Cellar brought in collectors from Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and from all across the US helping to push the total of proceeds from the auction to over $8.4 million, some 22% above the high estimate projections.

Highest price of the sale was $58,188, paid by an Asian private collector for a case of DRC Montrachet 1973.

’Tis the season for devilish deeds and dark tales… and we’ve got a ripping Halloween yarn to tell that might have been written for wine-lovers.

It’s a story packed with all the gruesome elements of a classic murder mystery—poison injections, a death threat inscribed on parchment, a cemetery appointment in the dark of the night and a hanging. But though this might sound like something dreamed up by Conan Doyle circa 1900, it’s no work of fiction. It’s a true story. It happened in 2010. And the victims of the poisoning? Well they weren’t human at all, but the magnificent vines of Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti—producer of one of the most desirable and expensive wines on the planet.

The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is Burgundy’s premier wine-producer, responsible for a Pinot Noir of formidable repute. Like its awe-inspiring history, Romanée-Conti’s renown is centuries old. Back in 1780, the Archbishop of Paris called this glorious red, “velvet and satin in bottles.” And you’d be hard-pushed to find more lavish praise than the words of Roald Dahl, who likened drinking Romanée-Conti to “experiencing an orgasm at once in the mouth and the nose.”

To illustrate just how devastating the 2010 attack on the Romanée-Conti domaine could have been—financially, as well as culturally—consider that a single, large-format bottle of the 1999 vintage recently sold for more than $100,000. So you can imagine the fear of estate-owner Aubert de Villaine, when in January 2010 he received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his priceless heritage.

Chapter one: In which de Villaine receives the first two anonymous letters

Aubert de Villaine received three malicious mailings in total from an unnamed sender. The first, sent in early January, contained a rolled up parchment in a cylindrical tube. On it was sketched a detailed and impressively accurate drawing of the 4.46-acre Romanée-Conti vineyard, with a mysterious circle in the middle of it. An accompanying note warned that de Villaine’s prized yard would be destroyed—unless he complied with the ransom demands which were to follow.

Aubert dismissed the letter as the sick joke of a prankster. But then, a couple of weeks later, a second package arrived on his doorstep. It contained the same kind of cylindrical tube and parchment as before. This time though, the diagram of the vineyard was marked with two circles—an additional one in the top-left corner of the vineyard, much smaller than the first.

The second letter demanded that De Villaine leave one million euros in a suitcase, close to the spot where the small circle was marked on the drawing. To show that the blackmailer meant business, he or she informed the horrified estate-owner that two vines in the area enclosed by the small circle had already been killed by poison. A further 80 vines, located within the large circle, had also been poisoned, but could be saved by an antidote. Provided, that was, that de Villaine paid the extortionate ransom sum.

Chapter two: Crime scene investigation

This time, de Villaine did not hesitate. He immediately called the police, and a team of investigators soon arrived and set to work on the vines. They found that two had indeed been poisoned by herbicide. The assassin had drilled a hole in the foot of each vine, then used a syringe to administer a lethal injection. When the other eighty vines were examined, the police found the same drill holes, but no evidence of poison. The blackmailer’s story was at least in part a bluff.

The police’s discovery not only gave a glimmer of hope for the vineyard—it also revealed a vital clue about the assassin’s identity. The syringe technique used to administer the poison smacked of a traditional method used to protect vines from the phylloxera insect, where liquid carbon disulfide was injected into the soil. It seemed that whoever had sabotaged the vines knew a great deal about winemaking, a suspicion backed up by the appearance of some highly specialized winemaking terminology in the second letter.

Chapter three: The heroic acts of Jean-Charles Cuvelier

On the advice of the police, de Villaine sent his trusted employee Jean-Charles Cuvelier down to the vineyard to set a trap for the grape-vine slaughterer. Instead of the case of money, Cuvelier left a note promising that the ransom would be paid after a period of time needed to gather together such a large sum. A few days later, de Villaine received his third and final anonymous mailing. Please, asked the assassin, with uncharacteristic politeness, deliver the money, in a suitcase, to the cemetery in the nearby town of Chambolle-Musigny, at 11pm on February 12, 2010.

Re-enter Cuvelier, de Villaine’s right-hand man. Here’s where the story gains all the spookiness of a Halloween fireside yarn. Picture the scene in which Cuvelier enters the cemetery in the pitch black, pushing his way through a great, arching, wrought-iron gate, which grates eerily on its hinges. He carries a suitcase carrying one million fake euros—and something else, a tracking device that would activate itself when the bag passed back through the gateway. Cuvelier, with trembling hands, drops the case just inside the fence and flees like a bat out of hell to his car. Half an hour later he receives a phone call from the police. Mission accomplished! The assassin had been captured.

Chapter Four: In which the grape-vine murderer meets the grim reaper

And we can now reveal the identity of the criminal: one Jacques Soltys, a previous offender in his late 50s who’d attended the Lycée Viticole de Beaune wine-making school as an adolescent. Five months after his arrest our tale reaches its grizzly conclusion. Overcome perhaps by remorse in the face of his life of crime, Soltys hung himself in a Dijon prison.

Soltys’ dastardly scheme to poison de Villaine’s precious vineyard was unprecedented. And though it makes for excellent Halloween storytelling, we hope—for the sake of connoisseurs and wine investors everywhere—that Burgundy’s foremost domaine never sees such a crime repeated.

Westgarth Wines is not registered as an investment adviser and not regulated by the Security and Exchange Commission or any state securities regulatory agency. Westgarth Wines does not offer financial advice on any asset other than wine. Investing in wine involves risk as prices fluctuate. We advise you to seek independent financial advice before investing in wine.